The Works of Thomas De Quincey, Part II vol 11

Grevel Lindop, Barry Symonds

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000749748
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) is considered one of the most important English prose writers of the early-19th century. This is the second part of a 21-volume set presenting De Quincey's work, also including previously unpublished material.

Articles from Tait's Magazine, 1838–41

A BRIEF APPRAISAL OF THE GREEK LITERATURE IN ITS FOREMOST PRETENSIONS:

By way of Counsel to Adults who are hesitating as to the Propriety of Studying the Greek Language with a view to the Literature; and by way of consolation to those whom circumstances have obliged to lay aside that plan.

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

First published in Tait’s, o.s. IX, n.s. V, December 1838, pp. 763–75. Not reprinted in De Quincey’s lifetime.

In a letter to Tait, De Quincey mentions having received the proofs of ‘my Greek art.’ on 3 October 1838, adding that it ‘reads fluently and readably to me’ (NLS, MS 1670, f. 48 (b)). The reasons for the article’s failure to appear in SGG are not known. Masson thought that ‘no paper ever written by De Quincey is calculated to rouse more vehement resentment in high quarters’ (M, X, p. 5), due to its disparaging comments on Greek literature and the ‘forced jocularity’ of its tone. Indeed, Masson wrote that there had been attempts to persuade him to omit it from The Collected Writings (1889–90) (M, X, p. 6). There is no evidence, however, that De Quincey renounced the essay on account of any retrospective dissatisfaction with its content or style. On the contrary,he reiterated the reservations about Greek literature he had expressed in ‘A Brief Appraisal’ in later papers which were reprinted in SGG, for example in ‘The Antigone of Sophocles’(1846), which appeared in SGG, XIV in 1860 (see Vol. 15).

No question has been coming up at intervals for reconsideration more frequently than that which respects the comparative pretensions of Pagan (viz., Greek and Roman) Literature on the one side, and Modern (that is, the Literature of Christendom) on the other. Being brought uniformly before unjust tribunals – that is, tribunals corrupted and bribed by their own vanity – it is not wonderful that this great question should have been stifled and overlaid with peremptory decrees, dogmatically cutting the knot rather than skilfully untying it, as often as it has been moved afresh, and put upon the roll for a rehearing. It is no mystery to those who are in the secret, and who can lay A and B together, why it should have happened that the most interesting of all literary questions, and the most comprehensive, (for it includes most others, and some special to itself,) has, in the first place, never been pleaded in a style of dignity, of philosophic precision, of feeling, or of research, proportioned to its own merits, and to the numerous ‘issues’ (forensically speaking) depending upon it; nor, in the second place, has ever received such an adjudication as was satisfactory even at the moment. For, be it remembered, after all, that any provisional adjudication – one growing out of the fashion or taste of a single era – could not, at any rate, be binding for a different era. A judgment which met the approbation of Spenser could hardly have satisfied Dryden; nor another which satisfied Pope,¹ have been recognised as authentic by us of the year 1838. It is the normal or exemplary condition of the human mind, its ideal condition, not its abnormal condition, as seen in the transitory modes and fashions of its taste or its opinions, which only

‘Can lay great bases for eternity,’²

or give even a colourable permanence to any decision in a matter so large, so perplexed, so profound, as this great pending suit between antiquity and ourselves – between the junior men of this earth and ourselves, the seniors, as Lord Bacon reasonably calls us.³ Appeals will he brought ad infinitum – we ourselves shall bring appeals, to set aside any judgment that may be given, until something more is consulted than individual taste; better evidence brought forward than the result of individual reading; something higher laid down as the grounds of judgment, as the very principles of the jurisprudence which controls the court, that those vague responsa prudentum,⁴ countersigned by the great name, perhaps, of Aristotle, but still too often mere products of local convenience, of inexperience, of experience too limited and exclusively Grecian, or of absolute caprice – rules, in short, which are themselves not less truly sub judice and liable to appeal than that very appeal cause to which they are applied as decisive.

We have remarked, that it is no mystery why the decision should have gone pretty uniformly in favour of the ancients; for here is the dilemma: – A man, attempting this problem, is or is not a classical scholar. If he is, then he has already received a bias in his judgment; he is a bribed man, bribed by his vanity; and is liable to be challenged as one of the judges. If he is not, then he is but imperfectly qualified – imperfectly as respects his knowledge and powers; whilst, even as respects his will and affections, it may be alleged that he also is under a bias and a corrupt influence; his interest being no less obvious to undervalue a literature, which, as to him, is tabooed and under lock and key, than his opponent’s is to put a preposterous value upon that knowledge which very probably is the one sole advantageous distinction between him and his neighbours.

We might cite an illustration from the French literary history on this very point. Every nation in turn has had its rows in this great quarrel, which is, in fact, coextensive with the controversies upon human nature itself. The French, of course, have had theirs – solemn tournaments, single duels, casual ‘turnups,’ and regular ‘stand-up’ fights. The most celebrated of these was in the beginning of the last century, when, amongst others who acted as bottle-holders, umpires, &c., two champions in particular ‘peeled’ and fought a considerable number of rounds, mutually administering severe punishment, and both coming out of the ring disfigured: these were M. la Motte and Madame Dacier.⁵ But Motte was the favourite at first, and once he got Dacier ‘into chancery,’ and ‘fibbed’⁶ her twice round the ropes, so that she became a truly pitiable and delightful spectacle to the connoisseurs in fibbing and bloodshed. But here lay the difference: Motte was a hard hitter; he was a clever man, and (which all clever men are not) a man of sense; but, like Shakspeare, he had no Greek. On the other hand, Dacier had nothing but Greek. A certain abbé, at that time, amused all Paris with his caricatures of this Madame Dacier, ‘who,’ said he, ‘ought to be cooking her husband’s dinner, and darning his stockings, instead of skirmishing and tilting with Grecian spears; for, be it known that, after all her not cooking and her not darning, she is as poor a scholar as her injured husband is a good one.’⁷ And there the abbé was right; witness the husband’s Horace, in 9 vols., against the wife’s Homer.⁸ However, this was not generally understood. The lady, it was believed, waded petticoat-deep in Greek clover; and in any Grecian field of dispute, naturally she must be in the right, as against one who barely knew his own language and a little Latin. Motte was, therefore, thought by most people to have come off second best. For, as soon as ever he opened thus – ‘Madame, it seems to me that, agreeably to all common sense or common decorum, the Greek poet should here’ – instantly, without listening to his argument, the intrepid Amazon replied, ('υποδρα ’ιδουσα)⁹ ‘You foolish man! you remarkably silly man! – that is because you know no better; and the reason you know no better, is because you do not understand ton d’apameibomenos¹⁰ as I do.’ Ton d’apameibomenos fell like a hand-grenade amongst Motte’s papers, and blew him up effectually in the opinion of the multitude. No matter what he might say in reply – no matter how reasonable, how unanswerable – that one spell of ‘No Greek! no Greek!’ availed as a talisman to the lady both for offence and defence; and refuted all syllogisms and all eloquence as effectually as the cry of A la lanterne!¹¹ in the same country some fourscore years after.

So it will always be. Those who (like Madame Dacier) possess no accomplishment but Greek, will, of necessity, set a super-human value upon that literature in all its parts, to which their own narrow skill becomes an available key. Besides that, over and above this coarse and conscious motive for overrating that which reacts with an equal and answerable overrating upon their own little philological attainments, there is another agency at work, and quite unconsciously to the subjects of that agency, in disturbing the sanity of any estimate they may make of a foreign literature. It is the habit (well known to psychologists) of transferring to anything created by our own skill, or which reflects our own skill, as if it lay causatively and objectively* in the reflecting thing itself, that pleasurable power which in very truth belongs subjectively*¹² to the mind of him who surveys it, from conscious success in the exercise of his own energies. Hence it is that we see daily without surprise, young ladies hanging enamoured over the pages of an Italian author, and calling attention to trivial commonplaces, such as, clothed in plain mother English, would have been more repulsive to them than the distinctions of a theologian, or the counsels of a great-grandmother. They mistake for a pleasure yielded by the author, what is in fact the pleasure attending their own success in mastering what was lately an insuperable difficulty.

* Objectively and subjectively are terms somewhat too metaphysical; but they are so indispensable to accurate thinking that we are inclined to shew them some indulgence; and, the more so, in cases where the mere position and connexion of the words are half sufficient to explain their application.

It is indeed a pitiable spectacle to any man of sense and feeling, who happens to be really familiar with the golden treasures of his own ancestral literature, and a spectacle which moves alternately scorn and sorrow, to see young people squandering their time and painful study upon writers not fit to unloose the shoes’ latchets of many amongst their own compatriots; making painful and remote voyages after the drossy refuse, when the pure gold lies neglected at their feet. Too often he is reminded of a case, which is still sometimes to be witnessed in London. Now and then it will happen that a lover of art, modern or antique alike, according to its excellence, will find himself honoured by an invitation from some millionaire, or some towering grandee, to ‘assist,’ as the phrase is, at the opening of a case newly landed from the Tiber or the Arno, and fraught (as he is assured) with the very gems of Italian art, intermingled besides with many genuine antiques. He goes: the cases are solemnly disgorged; adulatory hangers on, calling themselves artists, and, at all events, so much so as to appreciate the solemn farce enacted, stand by uttering hollow applauses of my Lord’s taste, and endeavouring to play upon the tinkling cymbals of spurious enthusiasm: whilst every man of real discernment perceives at a glance the mere refuse and sweeping of a third-rate studio, such as many a native artist would disdain to turn out of his hands; and antiques such as could be produced, with a month’s notice, by cart loads, in many an obscure corner of London. Yet for this rubbish has the great man taken a painful tour; compassed land and sea; paid away in exchange a king’s ransom; and now claims on their behalf, the very humblest homage of artists who are taxed with the basest envy if they refuse it, and who, meantime, cannot in sincerity look upon the trumpery with other feelings than such as the potter’s wheel, if (like Ezekiel’s wheels)¹³ it were instinct with spirit, would entertain for the vilest of its own creations – culinary or ‘post-culinary’ mugs and jugs. We, the writers of this paper, are not artists, are not connected with artists. God knows it, as well as Mr Tait.¹⁴ And yet, upon the general principle of sympathy with native merit, and of disgust towards all affectation, we cannot but recall such anecdotes with scorn; and often we recollect the stories recorded by poor Benvenuto Cellini¹⁵, that dissolute but brilliant vagabond, who (like our own British artists) was sometimes upbraided with the degeneracy of modern art, and, upon his humbly requesting some evidence, received, by way of practical answer, a sculptured gem or vase, perhaps with a scornful demand of – when would he be able to produce anything like that – ‘eh, Master Ben? Fancy we must wait a few centuries or so, before you’ll be ready with the fellow of this.’ And, lo! on looking into some hidden angle of the beautiful production, poor Cellini discovered his own private mark, the supposed antique having been a pure forgery of his own. Such cases remind one too forcibly of the pretty Horatian tale,¹⁶ where, in a contest between two men who undertake to mimic a pig’s grunting, he who happens to be the favourite of the audience is applauded to the echo for his felicitous execution, and repeatedly encored, whilst the other man is hissed off the stage, and well kicked by a band of amateurs and cognoscenti, as a poor miserable copyist and impostor; but, unfortunately for the credit of his exploders, he has just time, before they have quite kicked him off, for exposing to view the real pig concealed under his cloak, which pig it was, and not himself, that had been the artist – forced by pinches into ‘mimicry’ of his own porcine music. Of all baffled connoisseurs, surely these Roman pig-fanciers must have looked the most confounded. Yet there is no knowing: and we ourselves have a clever friend, but rather too given to subtilising, who contends, upon some argument not perfectly intelligible to us, that Horace was not so conclusive in his logic as he fancied; that the real pig might not have an ‘ideal’ or normal squeak, but a peculiar and non-representative squeak; and that, after all, the man might deserve the ‘threshing’ he got. Well, it may be so; but, however, the Roman audience, wrong or not, for once fancied themselves in the wrong; and we cannot but regret that our own ungenerous disparagers of native merit, and exclusive eulogisers of the dead or the alien – of those only ‘quos Libitina sacravit,’¹⁷ or whom oceans divide from us – are not now and then open to the same palpable refutation, as they are certainly guilty of the same mean error, in prejudging the whole question, and refusing to listen even to the plain evidence of their own feelings, or, in some cases, to the voice of their own senses.

From this preface it is already abundantly clear what side we take in this dispute about modern literature and the antique.* And we now propose to justify our leaning by a general review of the Pagan authors, in their elder section – that is, the Grecians. These will be enough in all conscience, for one essay; and even for them we meditate a very cursory inquest; not such as would suffice in a grand ceremonial day of battle – a justum prælium,¹⁸ as a Roman would call it – but in a mere perfunctory skirmish, or (if the reader objects to that word as pedantic, though, really, it is a highly favoured word amongst ancient divines, and with many a

* In general usage, ‘The antique’ is a phrase limited to the expression of art; but improperly so. It is quite as legitimately used to denote the literature of ancient times, in contradistinction to the modern. As to the term classical, though generally employed as equivalent to Greek and Roman, the reader must not forget this is quite a false limitation, contradicting the very reason for applying the word in any sense to literature. For the application arose thus: The social body of Rome being divided into six classes, of which the lowest was the sixth, it followed that the highest was the first. Thence, by a natural process common to most languages, those who belonged to this highest had no number at all assigned to them. The very absence of a number, the calling them classici, implied that they belonged to the class emphatically, or par excellence. The classics meant, therefore, the grandees in social consideration; and thence by analogy in literature. But if this analogy be transferred from Rome to Greece, where it had no corresponding root in civic arrangement – then, by parity of reason, to all nations.

‘philosopher,
Who has read Alexander Ross over,’¹⁹

why, in that case, let us indulge his fastidious taste by calling it an autoschediastic combat, to which, surely, there can be no such objection. And as the manner of the combat is autoschediastic or extemporaneous, and to meet a hurried occasion, so is the reader to understand that the object of our disputation is not the learned, but the unlearned student; and our purpose, not so much to discontent the one with his painful acquisitions, as to console the other under what, upon the old principle of omne ignotum pro magnifico,²⁰ he is too apt to imagine his irreparable disadvantages. We set before us, as our especial auditor, the reasonable man of plain sense but strong feeling, who wishes to know how much he has lost, and what injury the gods did him, when, though making him, perhaps, poetical, they cut short his allowance of Latin, and, as to Greek, gave him not a jot more than a cow has in her side pocket.

Let us begin at the beginning – and that, as everybody kno...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Conventions for Manuscript Transcription
• Articles from Tait's Magazine (1838—41):
• Articles from Blackwood's Magazine (1839—40):
• Manuscript Transcripts:
• Explanatory Notes
• Textual Notes